My dad was a chauffeur and picked up Johnny Cash at Kennedy Airport and he told him how much I love his train songs so they stopped at a record store and bought an album with him at a steam locomotive on the cover which he autographed. My mom threw it away with the children's records mom's throw away everything. You know how much that album would be worth today. Johnny Cash had Lionel trains they were sold for a zillion dollars after he died. He was not a Model Railroader per se but he kept on to the Lionel toy train she got when he was a kid. MPC showed faith Erin toy trains by coming out with new locomotives and cars. They made Lionel trains in America for over 20 years. They try to make toy trains in Mexico for a lower price but the quality was so crappy they brought it home. I like the fact that MPC made Rolling Stock in the Penn Central paint scheme because from good or bad the Penn Central was the railroad of the 1970s. Imagine a time when you could load up a train with brand new American-made cars on open car carriers and they got to their destination without being damaged and now they have to be closed in like a boxcar to make sure that they get to their destination intact. Now the car plants are gone the steel industry that service the car plants are gone and the railroad that serve them both are gone and our prosperity has gone overseas and they still have 75% unemployment. If Archie Bunker with President we would be buying nothing from them Godless commies.

I still have my father's 1931 Lionel 262 engine and cars that my grandfather bought for him. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, we had a large German population. They brought the custom of putting decorations- Nativity Scenes, houses, barns, metal figures and animals - under the Christmas Tree. Note where Lionel was located, so soon Lionel Trains began appearing under the trees here along with the traditional Christmas scenes...

I love this video, Tim! Thank you! My mother loved Lionel trains. She set up a gorgeous Lionel track complete with lit houses, carolers, skating rink, etc. My siblings and I looked forward to playing with the set under the tree every year. One of my favorite holiday memories and one that I continue to this day!

I love sharing the story of lionel trains .

Great video! Thank you, Tim!

This was great even BEFORE you got to the Neil Young part! True story: On the day I was scheduled to travel to New York to cover a massive GI Joe convention aboard the USS Intrepid, I stopped at Kalmbach Publishing, publishers of a magazine for which I was covering the convention, and also publisher of MODEL RAILROADER, the most widely read magazine about model trains. While I was in the "prop room" making sure some models and toys for other articles I'd written were ready for photography, in walked -- Neil Young. He was there to demonstrate for MODEL RAILROADER , that evening, the product you describe in your video. We chatted for a while, and he asked, "Are you gonna be there tonight?" I explained that I was going to a GI Joe convention in New York, which he said sounded like lots of fun. So, I didn't get to hang out with Neil Young that evening. On the other hand, I met a guy named Don Levine on the USS Intrepid, and the rest is history ...

My aunt met Joe DiMaggio when he was at some school passing out balls and back to the kids for summer. She was married but they became good friends until he went out west.

The tradition of putting toy train under a Christmas tree started in Europe. They used Clockwork or live steam locomotive. Along with lit candles in the Christmas tree it makes you wonder how people did not burn their houses down back then but people had more sense back then. Model railroading existed long before Lionel trains. Matthias Baldwin who founded Baldwin locomotive Works was a Model Railroader in the 19th century. To promote steam train companies would go around with a locomotive and a couple of cars and a circle of track. They would set it up and charge people 1 Penny to ride the train. Matthias Baldwin looked at the crappy locomotive they had and said he could do better. He Drew up plans for a steam locomotive. Made patterns and took them to a Foundry who cast the parts. He then made his own train to run on his property and his locomotive was such high-quality people ask him to make one for them and eventually that turned into the Baldwin locomotive works. Lionel is not only toy train manufacturer in the old days there were many before him including marklin in Germany. The Germans make the best of everything. He try to get Congress to put import tariffs and limitations on German toy trains and he was unsuccessful until World War 1.

Excellent chronology of a great American tradition and institution. Bravo!

Very well done,this is broadcast quality for the mainstream network.

What a good quality video, excellent work. Just a slight correction: it's been fairly conclusively proven that Lionels first rail product was the converse trolley, the electric express gondola being an afterthought and likely not even as a windows display, just an alternative product for the converse frame. The confusion appears to have arisen from an interview by jlc himself, asserting the Ingersoll shop display anecdote. Like a lot of things, especially in later years, jlc seems to have been extraordinarily reluctant to give praise or credit to anyone else. Hence his aversion to admitting his first product was powering another manufacturers product. This is all from some seriously indepth research done recently by Bruce Greenberg and others with early collections of pioneer Lionel products. I would've been quite happy watching twice as long, but you've rather remarkably crammed an immense amount of information, and time to focus on specific items, and yet in a completely unhurried pace. Genuinely very impressive

Super O was the top pf the line stuff. O-27 was the low end stuff.

Well produced video with great content. I also learned something from the folks in the comments. I did not know that Germans placed small things like villages under the tree and steam powered trains under their trees. Very interesting.

Lots of people my age remember when they had trains in the windows of various shop. It was nice just to stand out there and watch them run. I knew a store called adult Hobbies that had a t t g a u g e layout in the window. That scale was smaller than HO scale but bigger than N scale. It was called tabletop so you could run a small railroad on the top of a table but the locomotives and cars we're not as detailed as HO scale trains and were twice as expensive. They eventually became hon3 Narrow Gauge for the 3-foot railroads built out west. It was fun to stand in the snow outside a closed store that had the train still running they knew people would be looking at it even if the store was closed.

One very smart move that had Lionel bouncing back fast after World War 2 was their decision to keep the R&D department working full-steam-ahead even while production had been shut down. At the war's end they had a large well of new products ready to launch, leaning heavily on action features like the operating cars and scenery.

You forgot in the old days Lionel trains would give off ozone and you could smell it. Ozone protects us from radiation in space otherwise we would be like Mars.

Outstanding video

Have three Lionel Trains. Also a Lionel Battery Operated Polar Express. Like them for Christmas.

There was an article in an old Model Railroader magazine about using a bicycle to turn a generator to power your toy trains with. Let's not forget Clockwork train for very popular for people who did not have electricity. In fact one of Lionel's Engineers has a patent for a particular kind of mechanism for Clockwork train that he invented.

Great work, Tim. I love this history.

Awesome documentary!

Lionel service stations would make cars out of parts that they had. I remember one company made a machine to straighten out curved Lionel track so you can have straight sections. In Germany marklin still made toy trains Hermann Goering was a big toy train fan. And Model Railroader they had an article saying it was the most infamous trains in the world because they belonged to Hermann Goering. I remember a story about a guy in France who had a fantastic model railroad that he abandoned when he fled to England and Hermann Goering got all of his trains. And guess who made the buildings for Hermann Goering train layout. Take a wild guess.

Lionel sold as many polar express as they did Mickey Mouse,I have a Christmas display that went up in 2003, it never came down. Now in its 20th year.

1933 West the bottom of the dirty 30. By 1937 the railroads for buying more and more larger state-of-the-art steam locomotives. Steam locomotives at the time were around $100,000 Plus. The Southern Pacific had the prosperity special with like 25 big freight locomotive being delivered at once. If Lionel had a big stock of both standard gauge and regular toy trains come WWII they would have had something to sell to the public while they were making instruments and other things for the Navy. Gordon Varney look at the coming event and bought Machine Tools so he had lots of government contracts and he was able to get the most up-to-date production machinery so after the War he had all this beautiful Machinery to make HO scale trains with. It is a shame that the dyes for the diecast metal ft locomotives were lost. I wish all of Lionel Diesel and electric locomotives for all diecast instead of having plastic shells. Imagine how much traction effort with a diecast shell on top of magnatraction you would have. Then all the people who copied Lionel would have had diecast shells as well.

The tradition dates back to the 30s. Prior to that and into the 1930s, families would make small villages and display them under their tree. It was a cheap alternative for family activities and often replaced gifts themselves for those who could not afford. The train sets started appearing under the trees during the depressions end. People thought of these sets as the might and prosperity of the nation, growing, bringing prosperity to all.

By selling the Mickey Mouse handcar for a dollar they sold millions of them and it brought them out of bankruptcy because they had to buy a circle of track and a Transformer to run the little 99 Cent and car but those type of people would not be inclined to buy any other train other than something to run around the Christmas tree during Christmas season. They would not be inclined to buy more trains for larger locomotive.

Well made good video. Only correction is that in 1957 it was the H.O. (Half O) sized trains which Lionel introduced into it's line-up which were smaller and cheaper than the larger O-gauge trains. Lionel had the patent for Super-O track way before but chose to NOT introduce it during the early 1950s as sales were still very good. As sales declined during the decade, the head honcho's wanted to try & increase sales. One tactic was the Super-O track which looked more realistic, for the top-end trains. At the other end of the product line, Lionel made the plastic AAR truck on it's cars along with the H.O. trains. None of these would actually "save" the day as Lionel later went bankrupt anyways. There is a cult-collector following of Super-O track today.

Super O was not smaller. It was top of the line, meant to be more realistic. 027 was the smaller line.

In the eighteen-hundreds you would have a live steam locomotives in number one or number two circling around the Christmas tree because houses did not have electricity in those days. They also had lit candles lighting up the trees yet their houses did not burn down so I guess they exercised common sense is those days when Common Sense was common. Not like today. Christmas tree is a German custom and the trains running underneath we're German because the Germans invented model railroading as well.

The Train

I saw the Harry Potter set trade shop before it closed the cars were thin and flimsy which delicate details that would be easy for a child to break off. The plastic cars felt super light and cheap like they were made out of paper. I was saddened by the poor quality of it. Now Lionel has Polar Express train and Christmas trains out the wazoo. $2,700 for a locomotive that comes damaged in shipping as well as not running properly right out of the box by not being tested at the factory to make sure it works. How can their stuff be so expensive when it is made in a country where they make $2 an hour? How much do you pay for the name on The Box? What would the price of that engine be with just the name of the Chinese Factory that built it? How much is it for all of this super expensive unreliable electronics that are in that locomotive. I have old model railroad magazines from the 1940s and 1950s with a lot of Lionel stuff in them and they show people who made their own articulated locomotive by joining the front shell of two locomotives and you can't even see where the shell is connected. When I do buy new trains I buy conventional only. I have some MTH locomotives to PS2 that I have to argue with the computer to shut itself off I don't need any of that electronic crap ola. You use it at it goes bad you leave it brand new in the box and a delaminate overtime so you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I know a guy with an MTH Pennsylvania Q2 duplex with PS1 that the electronics died and he had the trade shop guy wire up everything to go forward only. He still has smoke she still has lights and it runs forward that's all you need.

I lionel and i have hogwarts express and i have the lionel battery power train from learning curves and imaginarium. I want lionel super chief, gs4 daylight and acela

All of the American manufacturers copied marklin method of running trains on 3 rail track. Real model railroaders who Marvel's 2 rail O scale like Bill Walters Irv athearn created train companies to produce what they make at home for their 0 scale railroads. There were two camps you would be at either the three rail toy train or the two rail realistic O scale trains. One with a c and one with DC one was still detailed and the other one was a toy. They hated each other like Harley-Davidson and Indian motorcycles or BSA and Triumph. There were companies that would make boxcars and would sell them without trucks so you could put on scale trucks and body couplers or you could put a Lionel truck with a coupler on it so you could use it either way.

If General Mills had not bought Lionel trains we would not have Lionel trains today. Of course they made trains in America with American Materials and American labor now the only thing American on a Lionel box is the name. Crappy quality and obscene prices not like the Lionel of the old day . Weaver built 0 scale trains and rolling stock in America and his prices were cheaper than any of the companies making stuff in China. I love running and all American-made train . On my 4 by 8 o27 layout underneath my hi-rail layout all of the items from the train themselves to the track and the scenery like the buildings are all American made. I love how on the Marx telephone poles on the bottom of the base it has the company symbol with made in USA. Of course when I put it back up I will run my Kaline big boy because it is scale size it fits in with the Diesels and the Rolling Stock. I have a Milwaukee special set brand new in the box. When the shed it was in got hit by the tree from the hurricane the Box got some water damage but the trains inside were intact. At $125 for the whole set it would be a great way for a beginner to get into toy train. There is so much good stuff out there just waiting to be bought. Just like in my HO scale days I throw away the Chinese boxes because I see no used to have them. The people who have original boxes are the ones who only ran their train around Christmas time and so they would put some back in the box when they were finished with them. Like vintage motorcycles they are simple to maintain and last forever. They also outlive their owners multiple times just like toy trains go from one generation to the other over and over and over. Train nuts will love them forever. I have an old Lionel SP Caboose that a previous owner had patient up in the New York Central paint scheme in gold leaf paint by hand. I just glazed the windows and glued a conductor on the rear platform. I have it on my 027 set. I like having cabooses list lights and detailed Interiors. Because there are so many EX HO scale model railroaders in 3 rail 0 gauge we expect things to be a certain way. Our influx has raised the bar of all manufacturers because things that were acceptable in the 1950s or not acceptable to us. We like detailed passenger car Interiors with passengers. For a lot of us silhouette in the window is just not acceptable anymore. I saw a guy convert a silhouette window car to one with interiors and lights to show the passengers he went through a hell of a lot of work. In HO scale you would buy add athearn passenger car kit. Then you put it together. Then you put lights in it and it shows how empty it is so then you put an interior in it and then you put passengers in it and the next thing you know you have spent $25 and stuff to a $10 passenger car. I spent more to fill up by subway car train with commuters that what I spent for the Subway car train set itself. Personally I think passenger car should come full of people because you're in the old days when you had passenger trains they were full of people because you did not have Airline or interstate highways.

After the control of Lionel was given to Roy Cohn things went really downhill because he made so many bad financial decisions. The cheap Lionel Scout line of train were abysmal in quality they brought down Lionel's reputation of good quality trains and she should have left the bottom of the barrel stuff to Marx. Lionel would spend a dollar to save a dime. He would Metal Frames so the trucks could be spun underneath the car and he could use a cheaper box. Train customers did not like him deleting parts it was an insult to them as a customer. Now to replace brake wheels and chimneys on cars the detail parts cost more than what you paid for the car. What is worse is when people make reproductions of Lionel they leave off stuff that Lionel left off to be cheap stuff like chimneys or nose decals on locomotive like the Baltimore and Ohio. You could by the nose decals for a nickel but it would cost you $0.10 in postage both ways. He should have upheld the quality of his product.

Imagine being fined $110 (todays money) for reckless bicycle riding

People having a little circle of semi scale trains running around a track once a year is not model railroading. When the season is over they get put in their boxes until next year. Once they have that little set they never buy anything else. Lionel trains should have catered to the operator and provided him scale size quality three Rail trains instead of continually she putting their product insulting their customer until they stopped buying them all together corporate mismanagement did not help as well. They cheapen their line of trains while wasting tons of money buying different companies that were useless in the end and did nothing but drag them down. Imagine what a great Sellar a full-scale size diecast gg1 Electric would be. The operator would have to buy 042 radius track in order to run the engines but still he could run it on a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood therefore he would sell track to be able to run the big engine on which is further typical big locomotive did not go on Small radius tracks because of their size. Some track and bridges could not accommodate large steam locomotives they're for extending the life of smaller lighter steam locomotive until the end of Steam.